I signed up more for nostalgic reasons... In Sep 1970, I was in the Navy and had just read an issue of a drag mag with either a Maverick or Comet on the cover with daylight under the front wheels. As soon as the first Yellow Comet GT showed up at the local LM dealership, I traded in my pea green 68 Dan Gurney 427 Cougar, and with only a few hundred miles on the car, kissed the warranty good bye.... pulled the motor and had John Charles (then an engine builder for Garlits) build it into a killer small block. Everything that added unnecessary weight got yanked... I bolted up a good used 4 speed and for the next five years it saw a whole lot of hard street/strip action in Pensacola and later in San Jose CA. A real sleeper essp with big, quiet mufflers and in spite of it's neon color, never attracted the cops. I sold it to a fella in John Day Oregon in 1976 and have always hoped that it has survived... Never kept any docs with the vin. Back then, even with a stock motor, by inverting the front shocks, modifying the shock bracket to drop it down into the tower, adding spacers to jack the sway bar, and a bit of ballast out beyond the rear axle, one good bounce on a launch would get at least one front tire off the ground. Great for bench racing bets, although it didn't take long before I had no takers.... Photos and time slips to follow (currently unscanned and buried in an old scrapbook somewhere in the attic)
Welcome to the board. My mom and brother used to live in Chesapeake. My brother now lives in Va. Beach. Nice area.
Great story! Welcome to the board! I am looking forward to the old pictures. Do you have any pics of the Cougar as well? Cougars are sweet! -Corbin
From wilkes Barre, Pa. I am a big Cougar nut and never saw a 427 Dan Gurny. I can just imagin what that car would be worth today.
My apologies - I confused the motor in the Gurney with a 68 GT 390hp 427 that I ran in NHRA SS/H in the mid-70's. The Gurney had a 428 but the 4 speed was probably fairly rare in the big block version. The CJ was an incredibly strong motor - closer to 450hp/550ft lbs than 335/430 based on quarter mile times. I have one or two photos of the car - one underhood - somewhere around here, but will have to tear the house apart looking.... Don't know what a nice big block is worth, but I saw a pristine 25,000 mile small block XR7G with a 4 speed and all the options sell for under $12,000 about 5 years ago. I guess a "Barrett Jackson" quality big block would run into big bucks.... In late 66 and '67 I worked on the Metuchen Mustang assy line while I was in college then did an engineering internship in the spring of 68. That particular Cougar had been built at Shelby as a factory executive car with nearly every avail option but apparently nobody wanted it for their own car because of the 4 speed. Most of the senior engineers and execs were "car guys" but they had all grown up before the era of automatics, and a well tweaked C6 could shift as hard and fast as a T&C toploader... A vp named Harry Anderson let me drive it to fetch coffee one day and I thought it was ten times better than my mustang in every respect. He arranged to put it on the "G" list (pool cars being sold) so that they could get something with an automatic. I got an extremely good deal but still paid a lot of money for it at the time - around $3200.00 after it was discounted as used althought they reset the warranty card to "new". Sales were made thru a local dealership - I traded in my 66 Mustang (GT) that I had bought on the payroll deduction - otherwise I would never have been able to afford the Cougar. Doesn't sound like much, today, but at the time the minimum wage was maybe a buck and a quarter and I was making a whopping $5.00 on the assy line.... and I recall paying just a whit over $2000 for the Mustang out the door. In Jan 71 the Cougar (still very clean but flogged hard at the local strips) was worth about $1800 on trade in and I had to get a small loan to cover the difference on the GT - I remember making payments of $27 and change every month for about 2 years and the loan company wouldn't let me pay it off early! I just found a bunch of black and white photos of the Comet - with slotted American mags and in one shot I can see the glass-packs hanging from the headers. I know I have at least 2 color prints - one is a shot of the engine sporting a 4500 series Holley Dominator back when they were a real status symbol.... Also found a time slip - from when I was running SS/MAuto in the '73 season at Kingdon in northern California. An embarassing 13.81 off a 13.84 national record (but still a win). And not bad tap time and speed even today for a non-roller cam on 8" slicks. Our wireless scanner isn't working at the moment. Soon as I get the photos scanned I'll upload them.
